For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have been silent, for our affliction is not to be compared with the loss to the king.”
Esther has waited through two banquets. Now the king asks a third time what she wants, and she speaks. She does not ask for a favour. She says that she and her people have already been sold. Two questions follow: why she stayed silent until now, and why slavery would have been bearable when destruction is not.
The Sale Already Made
Esther asks the king to spare her life and her people. She uses three words for what is planned: destroyed, killed, annihilated. Her words land on two men at once, and both are caught off guard.
Leslie M. GrantWhat a surprise it would be to both the king and Haman that she asked him to spare her and her people from total destruction! ... What astonishing words these would be to the king! Haman, however, would realize (with astonishment too) that Esther must be Jewish, and that her nation was the one he plotted to destroy.
The Slavery She Could Have Borne
Esther says she could have kept quiet about slavery. One writer marks the two things that make silence impossible now.
H. L. RossierIf the question had only been more slavery for Israel — selling them as male and female slaves — Esther could have stayed silent. But could she stay silent now, when her protector stands lifted up in honour, and when the question is the wiping out of her people? At this very moment Haman is judged.
The King's Own Loss
Esther's last words point at the king's own loss. They reach him in two places at once. (Older translations read "the adversary could not compensate the king's damage.")
William KellyShe had struck the right chord. All the king's affection burst out at this insult to the one he loved above all in the kingdom. But there was more: someone had dared to plan the destruction of the queen and all the queen's people — all her people, and without even the king's knowledge. Who could be the traitor?
The Timing of the Hour
Esther could have spoken earlier and did not. In between, the king was made to remember the man who had once saved his life. God is never named in this book, yet commentators read the timing as His.
William KellyThe king had been made to remember the deliverer he had forgotten. He did not forget that Esther still had some deeply felt request left to make. The moment had now come — the moment ordered by the secret providence of the One who alone can order anything rightly. And the queen poured out her pent-up soul without holding back. Her words were full of pity for her people, and full of anger against their enemy.
"My People"
Esther had kept her nationality hidden. What ends the silence is the attack on Mordecai.
H. L. RossierShe must not make herself known until the power of wickedness, represented by Haman, reaches its full measure. But then the enemy attacks Mordecai — a picture of Christ — and seeks to be rid of him. At that point Esther reveals herself. She cannot let Haman win, so she declares that she belongs to the people of God, whom she calls "my people." And she does this in front of the king, who greatly favours her and holds her dear.
The phrase "her people" runs through the book, and one writer makes it the key to the whole story.
Michael HardtThe Jews are described as "her people" (2:20; 4:8; 7:3). This detail does not apply to the church at all, but it casts much light on the true meaning: the fate of the entire people hangs on their representative, the faithful remnant (pictured in Esther). The fate of the Jewish people is central to the book.
Summary
- Sold. Esther does not warn of a plan. She says the sale is done: her people bought for destruction. The king hears a crime, not a request.
- Silence. Slavery she could have borne without a word. The wiping out of a nation she could not. That is why she speaks now.
- Loss. Her last argument is the king's own loss, which no payment could cover. It strikes the right chord, and his love and his anger break out together.
- Timing. She did not pick the hour by nerve alone. The king first remembered the man he had forgotten. A providence the book never names had set the moment.
- Identification. By saying "my people" before the throne, Esther ties her life to a condemned nation. The fate of that whole people hangs on where she stands.